This post is about how I installed windows 7 and Fedora 12 on my HP laptop / notebook DV2500 / DV2700 and how I partitioned the disk.
Most of you already have some version of windows pre-installed and windows 7 doesn't need any guide on how-to-install. Its that easy. Anyway, this are the partitions I made on my 160GB hard drive.

Windows 7 (C drive)- 30GB primary
System Reserved - 100MB primary (i didn't create this one, windows 7 did that )
Fedora 12 - 13GB extended
Data - The rest of the Hard drive (yes, /boot for fedora 12 is on extended partition)

After installing Windows 7, hardware drivers, essential software like antivirus, adobe acrobat etc I am left with approximately 15GB of the C drive. Thats pretty cool compared to vista which took around 45GB but it included all the pre-installed HP stuff. I am sure 30GB is going to be quite sufficient for windows 7. With windows 7 laptop stays cool and the fan is on most of the time but very very low and it doesn't bother. So, for HP laptops known for heating issues, this is definitely a very good improvement.

From with in windows I created the 'data' partition leaving about 13GB for fedora.

Fedora 12 and its partitions:

• Download the Fedora 12 DVD ISO image from HERE 
• Fedora's Live-USB-Creator from HERE and install it. 
• Plug in your 4GB USB drive and open the live usb creator, you can see 'use existing live CD', click browse and point to where the ISO image file is and then click 'create live USB'. It takes some time.
• Once that is completed, your USB is NOT yet ready! with this USB when we reboot our system we can go up to partitions and then it throws an error. This just did not work for me.
• So, open the USB drive and from the folder 'packages' delete everything, this folder contains all rpms.
• Now, copy your Fedora-12-i386-DVD.ISO image file into your USB drive, not into any folders with in the usb drive but directly under the drive.
• You now may reboot your machine with your usb still plugged and it will take you to fedora installation.
• Just follow the onscreen wizard until partition, choose 'custom layout'

Partitions in Fedora 12:

• After selecting custom layout you'll see two hard disk's: /dev/sda - system harddrive and /dev/sdb - usb drive.
• /dev/sda already has three primary paritions -
• /dev/sda1 30GB,
• /dev/sda2 100MB,
• /dev/sda3 109GB(data).
• We now need to create the 4th partition /dev/sda4 and this is going to be our extended partition by default from fedora installation wizard. And we'll slice /dev/sda4 according to our preferences.
• /boot is a required partition, so select /dev/sda and click 'new', mount this on /boot, give a 200MB for size. This is our /dev/sda5 within our /dev/sda4 extended partition.
• Now, with in our /dev/sda4 we still have unallocated space which we can slice. I'd suggest like this:
•  Swap partition - 1GB atleast
• /home - 3GB or 2.5 GB and the rest to /

With the above settings we have these partitions in summary:
/dev/sda1 - 30GB windows C drive
/dev/sda2 - 100MB system drive
/dev/sda3 - 109GB and
/dev/sda4 - 13GB, this is further divided into
                  /dev/sda5 - 100MB for /boot
                 /dev/sda6 - 1GB for swap
                 /dev/sda7 - 3GB for /home
                /dev/sda8 -  Rest of the drive for /

After the partitions make sure to choose to install the bootloader to /dev/sda, by default it'll be /dev/sdb. Do not forget to change that.
And then continue with the rest of the installation.

Fedora 11 was very bad on my HP DV2500 laptop, heat was way too much. After googling and going through forums I came to know that the culprit was firefox, for some reason. Then I tried opera in fedora 11 and the heat was definitely very low.
Well, Fedora 12 improved on that, laptop stays absolutely cool. Like in windows 7, fan stays on most of the time but it does't bother and is very very low. And its the same when I used firefox but I got used opera and its a pretty good browser.

I loved firefox for its features, ease of use, keyboard shortcuts etc etc. I am sure you appreciate firefox too. I use it a lot with about 8+ tabs opened everytime. But I honestly was not happy with the time it takes to load and I decided to search on the internet if there is any browser that is fast just for a backup to firefox.

And I found K-meleon. This is a open source and absolutely free. People on internet said it is fast and best browser out there and they said it right.
It definitely is very fast, opens up and loads websites in a blink of an eye. I just cant say enough how fast it does things, you gotta try. I wanted to have this as a backup but it replaced my firefox totally. 
Take a look at screen shot. I customised the appereance, hid all the toolbars, menubar, bookmarks etc etc. Just so I can have more room for the page. I can access all the options using keyboard shortcuts anyway. This broswer can fit a lot of tabs than firefox.

You wanna try, here is the direct download.



Check out its speed in the video. Both firefox and k-meleon are compared with about 8 tabs. If k-meleon were to be loaded with no tabs at all it just loads in no time, its like a dry leaf, very light weight.

 

There are many mp3 players out there for your blog/website like xspf player, flourish player, mixpod etc etc. Some work in firefox only, some work in both firefox and internet explorer but don't playlist. Anyway, with this post you'll be able to setup a working mp3 player for your website/blog.

1.First, you'll need a file hosting service, where you can store files(mp3 files in this case).
There are many free file hosting services out there. I will go with  www.skydrive.live.com
Capacity: 25GB
Max upload size: 50MB
Sign in to www.skydrive.live.com with your msn, hotmail or any live ID and upload your mp3 files into your public folder.

2.Right click on this link and save link as/save target as and save it to your PC...  PLAYER_MP3_MULTI.SWF and then upload it to your skydrive public folder.

3.We need permanent links for your files in skydrive so they're accessible over the internet all the time through the same links.

4.Now, as with the most of the file hosting services skydrive doesn't give out a permanent link for a file, so a file which is accesible through a link today may not be accessible tomorrow through the same link.
But don't worry! Thanks to Tim Acheson, he found a solution for us. Go ahead and get your permanent links to your files HERE



NOTE: You have to encode your link to use with Tim Acheson's API. From your skydrive copy the "web address." as shown in the figure and go to this SITE TO ENCODE .







5. You now have the permanent links for your mp3 player and your mp3 files.

• Sign into your blog and click on customize at top right corner 
• Click on "Add a gadget", that opens a window, in that look for HTML/JavaScript and click on it.
• Title: mp3 player, in "Content" copy and paste the following code:  
• 
  
  
  

  <object data="http://yoursite.com/player_mp3_multi.swf" 
  width="200" height="100" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
      <param value="http://yoursite.com/player_mp3_multi.swf" 
                       name="movie"/>
      <param value="#ffffff" name="bgcolor"/>
      <param value="mp3=http://yoursite.com/song1.mp3 | 
  http://yoursite.com/song2.mp3&amp;title=song1 | song2 
  &amp;autoplay=0&amp;showvolume=1" name="FlashVars"/>
  </object>
  

  
  
  
  
• In the above code, replace the  "http://yoursite.com/player_mp3_multi.swf" and "http://yoursite.com/song1.mp3" with your actual permanent links of your mp3 player and your mp3 files.
  
• Click on save button and you're done
  

This mp3 player both in firefox and internet explorer, unlike xspf player or any others I tried and  it is tiny and simple. I have this working mp3 player in my blog-footer, you should be able to have one too.